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The First Americans

© Kathy O'Halleran

Evidence of science and scholarship suggest that there are no remains of pre-Homo sapiens in the Americas. Who then, were the first Americans, and when did they arrive?

(Photo: Todd Damaino]

Anthropologists and scientists in numerous disciplines generally agree than between 70,000-30,000 years ago, an Ice Age phenomenon appeared that periodically caused sea levels to fall as much as three hundred feet, exposing a land mass of tundra, ice sheets and grass informally termed Beringia.

The Bering Strait today is once more covered with water. In prehistoric times, however, this landmass joined Siberia with Alaska. During periods when glaciating has occurred, sea levels have washed over this natural land bridge, preventing movement between the continents. Geologists believe the bridge appeared first 70,000-30,000 years ago, and then again 25,000-15,000 years ago, when it remained almost continuously open to migration traffic. Since then, it is believed that the land bridge rose above sea level once or twice more between 14,000-10,000 years ago.

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Anthropologists contend that ancient people from Asia-probably small hunting bands-were the first to cross the bridge as they pursued Ice Age game that was more abundant in the Americas. Big game hunting bands spread all the way to the Atlantic Coast and as deep as Central and South America where the Maya, Incas, Toltecs, Zapotecs and Aztecs later appeared. Mammoths, mastodons, outsized bison, and other now-extinct mammals were in abundant supply until about 10,000 years ago-the end of the last Ice Age. These ancient people survived mainly by hunting game, fishing and gathering plants, berries and seeds that grew wild.

As these ancient peoples adapted to their environments, cultural differences began to develop. Moreover, as big game and abundant fauna disappeared with the end of the Pleistocene Age, more sophisticated gathering of nuts, berries, grass seeds and knowledge of seasonal wild-growing fruits and vegetables became more important to survival.

Coastal peoples developed economies based upon fishing and marine survival, while big game hunting bands in woodlands territories honed survival skills specific to their environment, and desert cultures in the West developed sophisticated techniques for sustenance. It is also theorized that as hunting bands came in contact with one another, they sometimes combined to create a new people, diffusing and synthesizing their individual cultural and physical characteristics.

By at least 10,000 BC, according to archaeological evidence, humans were to be found throughout North and South America, developing unique cultures. It remains a matter of considerable controversy as to whether finds from as diverse locations as Alaska to Chile indicating human presence as far back as 35,000 years ago are accurate.

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